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Roca Opera

Madcap Spanish superchefs the Roca brothers staged a one-off culinary extravaganza for just 12 diners - and made a movie out of it, now available to buy from iTunes. There was ice cream that breathed, there were tears, there was Tony Cross

I'm standing on the sunny balcony of the Centre d'Art Santa Mònica at the southern tip of La Rambla, the main tourist artery that runs through central Barcelona, and I'm thinking about lunch. Lunch is late, and I have been standing, waiting, for 45 minutes. There is a rumour that the delay to my meal has been caused by the loss of six spoons. Lunch cannot begin without them, and I picture a junior chef scrambling through boxes of cutlery like someone trying to find their passport on the morning the flight leaves for their honeymoon.

It's a warm Catalan summer's day and down below, parked at the side of the street, is a bright orange truck. On the side of the truck is a name that explains why I'm here. It's also a name that means no one is going to complain that lunch is late.

Instead, my fellow guests and I make sympathetic expressions and pantomime sad-faces when we're told about the six missing spoons. Taxis are being cancelled, later flights are being missed, hotel rooms are being re-booked, but honestly, it's fine.

'El Cellar de Can Roca' is the name on the side of the truck and the chefs creating our lunch are the culinary world's most enigmatic siblings, the Roca brothers.

The lorry is about 100km south of where it should be, back at the restaurant's Girona base. Today the brothers are in town to perform 'El Somni', an epicurean opera in 12 courses. The food will be matched by 12 different wines, 12 especially recorded pieces of music, and as many 360-degree videos will surround 12 diners, of which I am one.

We will be eating and drinking from 12 sets of tableware, each one individually designed for each course. Together, the food, the music, the videos, the wine, every plate, glass (and,no doubt, spoon) will create an original story of a young girl's dream, told through the experience of food, drink, film and music.

But why would three brothers, currently running the world's most acclaimed restaurant, embark on such a venture? One could babble on about the Catalan psyche, its struggle for independence, the need to be recognised through its language, its food and its art. But there may be a simpler explanation...

Chef Ferran Adrià, the troubled genius who started as a pot washer at El Bulli and turned it into the world's most famous restaurant, is a case in point. Yesterday, a selection of celebrities sampled exactly same meal that I'm about to eat, and Adrià was among them.

His influence on El Cellar de Can Roca is acknowledged by the Roca brothers; for him, the artistic deconstruction of food and assembly of tiny dishes like a mosaic of mouth-watering deliciousness was also a constant battle to create something that was considered more than 'just a meal'.

The creations he invented at El Bulli were testament to his obsessive struggle to make culinary art. Many say he succeeded, but El Bulli's eventual closure, driven by financial destitution, leads us to the main reason that the Roca Brothers are taking a multi-media approach to achieve artistic status.

This year, Adrià has been touring Europe with an exhibition (and book) about El Bulli because world-class gourmet restaurants simply do not pay the rent. This isn't just a Spanish phenomenon - ask René Redzepi at Copenhagen's Noma, or Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck and you'll get the same answer. At best they break even.

It's the TV shows and the cookbooks (and now, presumably, exhibitions) that make the money, not the staff-heavy restaurants serving exquisite titbits at what many consider outlandish prices. So it's no coincidence that our first stop on this visit to Barcelona was Mediacom, a huge multinational company that plans to turn 'El Somni' into a movie...

Our first lunch in town is not with the Roca Brothers but with movie executives, one of them the man behind Vicky Cristina Barcelona. These are cigar-smoking big shots, and their presence makes it clear that what is in store for us will be no ordinary meal. They are coy about the final outcome of this project, and because they have invested a lot of money into a meal they will never eat, that is understandable.

Just how much money they won't say, but there are 80 people involved in creating this one very special lunch. The plan is that El Somni will soon be a film, a book, a DVD, a digital download… but first, it will be a meal. And, at last, that meal is about to start.

We are led from the balcony down several flights of stairs to the dark, cool vaults of the gallery. It's a long way from the warmth and bustle of La Rambla, and my eyes take a while to adjust to the darkness. We are relieved of our bags (though I keep my iPhone, keen to record what I can of this piece of culinary history) and move swiftly to a seat at the circular table.

Pictured: A candy floss cloud, touches of flowers and honey, confectionary and butterflies

The film played out on the walls and table is intriguing. Aquatic spirits swim up from the depths to deliver plates, the table becomes the surface of the moon from which we eat 'rocks'. The food and wine is far superior to the art, but then again the food and wine is superior to everything. Josep introduces the elements of the story with authority, but at times I wonder if I would rather hear more about the food and wine and less about the imaginary dream story. But there's no time to stop and wonder. Another course, another glass, another introduction is on its way.

The 12 courses are served relentlessly, as waiters, robotic musicians, lasers and video all work together. I watch world-class wine whisked away before I can finish it. Timing is everything. The tale of a young girl's first love, passion, war, death and spiritual resurrection is the backdrop. At one point we are transported to a battlefield, our plates splattered with beetroot blood to the rattle of a machine gun.

After the meal, Josep reveals that he tasted over 250 wines to select the 12 we drank today, with finding a wine resembling the taste of 'death' being his biggest challenge. Head chef Joan, like a cuddly uncle, is graciously accepting our thanks. He is keen to know what we thought of the art, but I avoid giving him a completely honest answer. Jordi is like a wild-eyed playboy, mischievous but oh-so modest.

But the food, the food. I am lucky enough to have eaten at the Fat Duck and at Noma. If Heston Blumenthal is the eccentric, brilliant British professor, and René Redzepi a left-field Scandinavian hippy perfectionist, then the Roca brothers are about to prove themselves as triumphant Spanish surrealists. Why? Because the imagination they apply to their food is hallucinatory: pigeon with roses, dried head of prawn, truffle inside a moon rock, poisonous mushrooms, a pulsating, 'breathing' plate of ice cream.

If opera is more than simply musical theatre, then this was more than simply theatrical food. It was opera, it was art. But most of all, it was an amazing lunch.

EL SOMNI: THE FULL MENU A guide to the 12 courses of 'El Somni', the most expensive meal ever caught on camera...

Amuse-bouche: Bonsai of pica-pica We are encouraged to pick up and eat tiny eggs and woodland parcels lying beneath a bonsai tree in front of us. Tastes include iced lemons, anchovies wrapped in olives, and collections of Asian flavours as the brothers invite us to "taste the world". It's fantastical, but the anchovies were a little surprise. It is accompanied by a rounded glass of Cava from 2001. Giant ants crawl around the video screens that surround us, and I'm starting to feel a bit itchy.

Prelude: Vegetable broth at a low temperature with the written word The soft-tasting broth (it may have needed some salt but I didn't ask for any) has an edible word of "Dormir" spelt out on the surface. This is the potion that our heroin of the story drinks before being sent into a deep sleep, and it is her dream which we will now experience.

Act 1: The Dream Begins The Moon: A sphere of white and black truffle with earthy distillate Until now the food has been playful, but this ball of moon rock, while fun, is very grown up, and as we bash into it to reveal the truffle cream inside, the moon fills the table before us. Our plates are bubbled black glossy porcelain, and stars twinkle around us on the screens. Perhaps most exciting is the wine that accompanies it. "A wine from 1881 that has never seen the sun," tells Josep.

Act 2: SpaceThe Air: Essence of Cap de Creus cactus figs (pictured above) A tiny palette-cleanser served on a slab of rock; imagine a light bubbly purple sorbet. A sweet wine tasting of aniseed served in a giant oversized glass accompanies it.

Act 3: OphiuchusA serpent of smoked eel A simple warm-up ahead of an assortment of seafood, this eel is succulent and delicately smoked, and served with a creamy sauce. The name, the star sign of the serpent, signals the storyline's descent from space to sea. It's gone in a bite, and accompanied by rather exciting Salon Champagne from 1999. Toasted in flavour after being matured for at least ten years in the bottle, this exclusive fizz house has made only 35 vintage years since 1905 - and this is one of the best.

Act 4: Under the seaVelouté of grilled sea urchin, a grilled shrimp with a chamber of a prawn head, pan seared sauce of sea anemone, parmentier of octopus, marinade of mussels, sea fennel barnacle Things are warming up now - an assortment of seafood served in what can only be described as a candlestick hung with half a dozen spiky silver sea anemones - each a vessel containing silky jewels from the sea, and the highlight is the velouté of sea urchin. The disturbing deconstructed dried prawn, with brittle crunchy legs, also has a green brain that is crispy-sweet like a seaweed honeycomb. Who would have thought? A white wine tasting of vanilla and pear helps wash it down.

Act 5: The Garden of the HesperidesA mandolin drawn with lemon, curry, beets, mango, coconut, fennel, yogurt, cinnamon, cardamom, mint, ginger, pepper, flowers, artichokes and lamb It is one of those dishes so beautiful that seems a travesty to take a fork to. But I do. Aromatic, simple to eat, a masterpiece to look at.

Act 6: The courtshipYin-yang oysters bathed in Palo Cortado sherry, oyster sauce, white and black garlic. I think I ate this one too quickly it slipped down so fast. Six more courses still to come...

EL SOMNI: THE MENU (continued)Act 7: CarnalitySauce of mole, grilled roses, juice of pigeon hen breast in a rose shape with rose water. A rose of meat is deceptively creepy, but the pigeon's strong taste is tempered by the rose water, giving it a perfumed elegance rarely associated with foul.

Act 8: Shattering/AppleA blown candy apple filled with foam, diced grilled apple and Sobrassada. Pork and apple sauce in the most extraordinary reimagining. The crisp apple shines like gold, before we smash it to reveal the sweet and savoury filling.

Act 9: WarGoose Royale with beetroot blood droplets Cue the most dramatic course of the meal, complete with machine gun splatter of beetroot blood on our plate resembling a deserted First World War battlefield. Uncomfortably tasty.

Act 10: Mercy/DeathFoam of purple potato, bon bon ice cream gentian, bone marrow, rhubarb with caviar and Trompette de la Mor in fumes of incense of Artemisia. I'm not sure I heard the translation of this before eating it. A poisonous mushroom? It was, well, unpleasantly acrid, and easily the most challenging on the palette. Did I like eating the taste of death? No. Like licking the inside and outside of a coffin at the same time. The wine that accompanies it is… dusty.

Act 11: GloryA breach dish of sourdough ice cream, purée of cocoa, dried and fresh lychee, caramelised chocolate and acid meringues. After a plate of death anything would have been welcome, but this shiny breathing white kidney-shaped plate pulsating with these sweet treats really did feel like it might have arrived from heaven.

Act 12: Awakening/Sweet SpringA candy floss cloud, touches of flowers and honey, confectionary and butterflies. A piece of naïve art to finish. If this meal were a nightclub, this would be the chill-out room.